Shale Kadran arose from his thin, straw stuffed bed in a stupor. Bleary eyed, he wiped the soot from his face and combed through his thick brown hair. His cold metallic fingers stung a little as they met his face.

He staggered upwards and stretched his aching joints. The many pops and crackles that accompanied his movements were overshadowed by the grunts and groans of his fellow conscripts around him. The rolling tide of awaking lethargy swept throughout the room like a sigh.

The morning bell had tolled, and by the time they’d successfully donned their breeches, boots, belts and shirts the second chime had sung. Shale took a moment to carefully affix his rather untrusty dagger and sheath to his belt and joined the others. The group dutifully lined up in single file and proceeded out of their dim, spartan dormitory and into the foggy air of the courtyard.

Shale’s tall, thin frame distinguished him from the crowd. He stood a head taller than the others, and the early morning light reflected off his metallic arms. The bitter eyes of the already awaiting Dawnguard instinctively fixed upon him as he stumbled outside. Shale spotted their stares and he straightened his back and began marching in series with the others as he should.

Scattered across the courtyard, ready to receive their respective units, the Dawnguard stood tall. Comprised of veteran guardsmen and the nobleborns’ servants, the Dawnguard looked neat and well groomed in their uniforms. Although even they were not susceptible to the decaying influence of Carrigan’s Blight. Rust still ate through their armour, and their clothes were relatively threadbare. Just like the conscripts, they were similarly patched up with thick leather around the knees, elbows and anywhere else a hole opened up.

The twelve man unit of sanitation workers Shale belonged to approached a spry, sturdy man with a colourful red plumage that sprouted from his hemet. It was Sergeant Bole, who was in charge of relaying their instructions for the day. His impassive gaze had not shifted this morning, and he rattled off a series of locations, boundaries and expectations for the crew.

“Collect your gear and proceed to Zone 63 for work. Your supervisors are,” Bole paused and Shale leant forward in anticipation. “Currently occupied. They will meet you at the work site soon after you arrive.”

Shale let loose a groan that did not escape Bole’s watch. He met Shale’s eyes and frowned, but let it go without comment.

After retrieving the soil purification tools and equipment, the team left for the stronghold’s front gate. It was already open in anticipation of their arrival.

The bleary red sun gurgled above the horizon line beyond the yawning gate. Its glaring rays diffused unevenly across the relaxed hills of dead soil and charcoal trees.

The stronghold entranceway fed into the tattered ancient road of Villifere. Its dense rocky surface slapped loudly beneath Shale’s foot. The collective unit’s footfalls echoed out across the barren earth before they plunged into the crunchy, ashen crust of the topsoil outside the narrow path’s edge.

The team made their way slowly across the earth, using their shovels and picks to prod the soil before them, ensuring the ground was steady and secure. Bringing up the rear was a small cart carrying the extra barrels, filters and other equipment needed for the job. Four wide, chunky wheels unenthusiastically creaked forwards as the unlucky pair assigned to the job of pulling the cart forwards inched their way along.

Every now and again someone would throw out a foot carelessly and sink knee deep into the sooty, charcoal toplayer. The soil they traversed was truly an enigma. No matter how frequently they marched through the muck, the dead wood, charcoal, bone and fresh ash would always reappear the next day. Unless they did their job of course.

A year ago Shale had witnessed a group of scientific and arcane practitioners visit Carrigan’s Blight from the Palirian Capital to study this exact phenomenon. Shale smirked, he still remembered that man’s huge gaping mouth after his companion tripped into a Thread-Thorn bush. It had been well watered that day. No other researchers ever made the three week trek to Illyrith’s Final Bastion again. A shame.

By the time they’d reached their allotted work-zone, the sun was halfway up the sky. Now a searing ball of white light, it stewed the unit inside their uniforms. Shale swore after absentmindedly brushing his ear with his hand. The metal surface of his arm was scalding hot after a couple of hours in the sun.

In response to Shale’s blunder, Evan, a fellow sanitation worker, gave Shale an incredulous look. Shale stuck out his tongue, reached out and poked him with a burning finger that sent Evan yelping. The others ignored the pair and began setting up the purification equipment. Evan huffed and walked off, rubbing his arm where a dark red print had already bloomed.

Shale grabbed his wooden barrel and using his shovel, started rolling it towards the crooked hill that was their designated work-site. The hill wasn’t particularly tall or steep, though it bowed in the middle, resulting in two steeped, rounded peaks. The western face of the hill, which pointed toward the miniature darkstone stronghold behind them, was speckled with dark brown and frosty grey spots; a stark contrast to the oppressive blackness which swallowed the rest of the land.

These patches reflected the land they’d already turned over and purified in the past week. The oldest toxin-free soil had lost its pigment and sunken as the detritus broke down, whilst the brown earth was recently panned through and would soon follow suit.

As Shale crested the top, an electric tingling manifested at the base of his metal elbow. Shale glanced down at the swirling patterns of lustrous grey metal that marked him and watched as a thin arc of quivering lightening fizzled its way up his forearm.

The blue light danced between the microscopic grooves and fissures in the plated metal. It surged down from his elbow towards his wrist with increasing speed as the somewhat more disparate diamonds of armour converged and overlapped into increasingly arabesque configurations.

Shale threw his hand out and dropped the shovel as the sizzling arc passed into his hand. There the metal plating was so tightly compact and finely interlocked that it felt smooth to the touch. The lightning vanished beneath the surface of the metal and discharged out of his fingers a fraction of a second later.

The air grew hot and crackled as the blue bolts leapt towards the falling wooden shovel handle. The power drove into the wood grain and exploded outwards with a deafening bang. Shale and a few men hanging by him dove to the ground as the shovel detonated, spraying forth a shower of wooden splinters.

Shale took the brunt of the force and he staggered back with a shout. A smattering of shards perforated his neck, and jaw. The disease that haphazardly covered him with metal thankfully protected him from some of the particularly jagged, lengthy pieces of wood.

The metal blade of the shovel sat smoking beneath the earth in two split pieces. It had been propelled by the detonation into the ground.

“Damn you Shale! Demonborn aberration!” The shout came from a man doubled over on the ground, a three inch splinter of wood sprouted from his thigh.

Shale plucked a few barbs from his face and hurried over to the man.

“Sorry, Roan. My mistake. Here let me help you with that.”

Roan batted Shale away, “I don’t want you anywhere near me, bastard!”

Shale obliged. Others approached Roan as Shale headed back to the cart to grab a spare shovel. A muffled scream rang out as he rifled through the dented spares. The splinter was out.

The unit soon commenced work after that. To the group’s collective relief, it appeared the usual sellsword supervisors had failed to arrive. Shale strode back to his solitary barrel atop the hill in silence. Evan met his eyes for a moment, but no one else looked up from their work.

Shale shrugged, he was used to this treatment, it was not entirely unjustified, he injured an acquaintance after all. His aberrations made as much sense to him as it did to them, the only difference was that he had the lived experience of them.

The metal plating first began appearing when he was just eight years old. That age fell in line with the several other individuals who’d endured the Blight that long. It normally took from six to eight years to fully sink in. Until there was no going back.

Whilst he wasn’t alone in that regard, he was the only person to have lived in the Blight their entire life. And only he and one other had manifested a second aberrancy. These explosive shocks were a frustrating new addition after all.

Shale crested the hill once more, rolled his shoulders back, stretched his arms high in the air and yelled at the top of his lungs. A few newer conscrips jumped in shock, whilst others hissed or cursed the noise. Shale, was content. His mother had taught him to let go of his frustrations with a quick shout before she had died, and it always did the trick. It was important not to linger on the negative in the wastelands, or it would swallow you up.

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Ready to work, he set up his soil filters and catchments and fished the last few splinters from his neck. Shale pushed his shovel gently into the soft top layer of ash and carefully tipped the load into the top of his completed filtration device, otherwise known as a barrel lined with sieves.

Layered through the barrel were several fine mesh sheets that toxic, contaminated soil was filtered through. Shale steadily ploughed into the earth, excavating the thick layer of topsoil into the barrel. Once half-full, he hoisted up the barrel, and mustered all his strength to beat, shake and toss it about until the soil had passed through each layer of mesh.

Once he was thoroughly damp with sweat, Shale set the barrel down, gave it a last few taps and opened up a little door two thirds of the way down to retrieve the dark powder that had accumulated there.

He didn’t bother donning the thick gloves the others wore to handle the Volatile Matter. He was already an aberrant afterall, there was no point in being precautious now.

There was scarcely more than a spoonful of the powder in the compartment and he swept it into a grubbly little pouch around his waist. He shut the door back up, and tipped the safe, purified earth into the hole he’d made.

That was one load down, a few dozen more to go.

Halfway through the day, the rasping chorus of shovels abruptly stopped as a deep resounding thrum rolled across the hill. Shale froze and looked down at the patch of earth he’d just dug into. Striated charcoal and silt broke away into chunky pieces of earth. A fleck of bone and gravel still clung to the end of his shovel, but otherwise nothing looked out of the ordinary.

His sigh joined others as they, too, hesitantly peered into their freshly dug holes. Their relief quickly transformed into grim fascination as they searched for the unlucky soul. Shale’s eyes fell upon Roan, the man who’d cursed and damned him earlier. Roan was standing unnaturally straight with his head fixed straight down and his face deathly pale. His knuckles flashed white as his hands trembled atop the shovel handle in front of him.

The others noticed Roan, and slowly and silently backed away from the doomed man. His head snapped up at them. Terror gripped his mind, his mouth hung agape and tears welled in his eyes.

Nobody said a word. Roan forced himself to look back down at what he’d struck. The edge of his shovel blade had bit into the side of a luminescent rock. Harsh white light bled through the grime adhered to its surface, and a drifting column of smoke rose up from the cracked edge Roan had created.

Keeping one hand atop the shovel handle, Roan inched his body as far back from the rock as possible. He stood nearly three feet from the hole, keeping only a few fingers in contact with the handle.

Shale chewed his lower lip as he looked on. Roan’s strategy made sense to him. But the instant Roan lifted his last finger from the shovel the stone flashed, temporarily blinding everyone who still looked on.

Shale rapidly blinked, the stark white impression of Roan’s bent figure was seared into his vision and followed his wandering eyes. There were two thuds. The flimsy small clunk of a shovel, and the heavy boom of a fallen body.

Roan’s frozen figure finally faded from Shale’s vision and he cast his eyes over the man’s actual body. It lay crumpled face down in the dirt. All the life had been wrested from him. He was dead.

Shale pursed his lips, bowed his head to Roan and turned back around. The chorus of shovels resumed again. There was a quota to be fulfilled.

Shale volunteered to help pull the cart for their return journey. The sun was halfway down the sky now, and the cart was notably heavier. Roan’s limp body was nestled between the numerous barrels, and extra equipment.

Evan trudged alongside Shale. No one else had stepped forward to help pull the cart, and the man formerly assigned to the position never spoke up. Nor was he called out.

Shale looked over to Evan. The harness wrapped around his small, thin frame twice and he walked foot further ahead than Shale to account for the difference in strength.

“One of those days, hey, Evan?” grumbled Shale.

Evan looked back at Shale and said nothing. He didn’t glare or curse at him, nor did he crack a smile. He simply met Shale’s gaze with his clear blue eyes and then turned away. This felt much worse for some reason.

Sergeant Bole waited outside the stronghold gate with a few guardsmen. He appeared quite distraught, and paid Shale’s group little attention until one of the guardsmen nudged Bole and pointed to Roan’s body as the unit passed through the gate.

Bole swore and stormed over to them. They stopped their march and the Sergeant appraised Roan’s body.

“What happened?!” He shouted.

“Sever-stone!” Someone called back.

Bole swore again and walked back outside the gate.

“Unpack the gear and leave the cart and the body out here with us.” He ordered.

Shale scratched his head, and the others whispered confusedly around him.

Bole added, “We’re anticipating more casualties shortly. Now do as I said, and head to the mess hall.”

The unit obeyed, and offloaded their equipment into the storage house. As Shale left the musty room, he deposited his small pouch of Volatile Matter into the hands of a solemn servant dressed in grey. Her face was hidden by an opaque veil. Shale had never seen behind that cloth, nor heard her voice. The conscripts rather uncreatively named her Grey.

A commotion broke out at the front gate when a trio of young uniformed mages sauntered up towards the stronghold. They were followed by a small caravan of merchant wagons hauled by thirsty horses.

Bole started shouting something at them as a square, beefy man descended from his chair atop the leading wagon and began waving his hands around in apology.

Shale meandered past them on his way to the mess hall. Evidently the caravan was made up of the merchants who brought Illyrith’s Final Bastion food, cloth and materials each month. They were a day early, much to the contempt of Sergeant Bole. Shale marked the three wide eyed teenagers wandering the courtyard aimlessly and suspected they were to blame for the early arrival.

Embroidered across their chests was a fierce, indignant looking Elder Dragon. Stitched in scarlet thread, it curled around the Capital’s renowned Pillar of Wisdom. Shale recognised the symbol as the crest of the Royal Academy of Magery. This trip was likely some practical school assignment. Shale spared a little pity for the group. He couldn’t imagine a worse place to travel.

Shale left the commotion to play out by itself and entered the Mess Hall’s rank and noisy embrace. Food wasn’t available yet, so he took his place at the far left table, the furthest from the entrance. This was where he, and a small group of other conscripted soldiers and waste disposal workers of a similar kind ate together.

Or in other words, the aberrants. The few others who were also warped by the Blight’s effect over several years. Most of them already sat and waited, only one looked up as Shale took his place among them. Three spots were left empty.

“Dead?” Shale intoned.

“Yes.” Replied the other. Shale did not know the fellows name, they had never worked in the same unit before. Nor were they ever particularly talkative during meals.

The other seats remained empty that night. The trio who usually took them had died over the course of the day, alongside Roan and two newer mercenaries. Nobody spoke of them, each for their own reasons.

Shale had made a few friends over the years before, but they never lasted. Thus he simply stopped making new ones. He appreciated the irony, given that all that sat with him were the longest lasting, most experienced members of the stronghold. But it was as though they were cursed. People always died when connections were made.

He figured that most of the others felt similarly. It didn’t help that the potential friend pool to draw from was filled with serial killers, thieves and worse.

There was one man who broke the silence, but Barant had little to say. Seated across from him, the ghoulish man mumbled and spat saliva across the table. His spinning eyes probed everyone and lingered on the empty seats. He appeared to be struggling to suppress laughter, though he didn’t put up much of a fight.

Shale turned from Barant’s wet, twisted grin and spotted tonight’s dinner arriving. His stomach rumbled and he hurried up from his seat and joined the growing line to receive food.

Much to the chagrin of the majority of those eating that night, everyone’s woeful serving of mystery meat was this time accompanied by a small pile of frozen peas. They had arrived just moments ago as a part of the caravan. The complex freezing magic used to preserve them during their long journey had not yet broken as a result of their early arrival.

Umbar, the Mess Hall’s designated head chef, was a man with a strange sense of humour. In his great wisdom he decided to serve the newly arrived, very solid, stone-like peas to everyone right away. It was his own little extra treat.

The green conscripts and the servants bemoaned their ‘treat’, attempting to hide, stuff or otherwise misplace the peas. Shale spotted a young woman attempting to mash one with the base of her fork. It flew across the room, ricocheted off the ceiling and dropped down atop Evan’s head a few tables over.

Shale scarfed down the peas as best he could alongside the other veterans. Extra food was unheard of and he thanked Umbar for his peculiar decision as he picked at the frozen peas stuck to the inside of his mouth with his tongue. The subzero temperature was no joke. The freezing peas bit into his flesh as soon as they made contact with the inside of his mouth.

Regardless, food was food, and Shale continued eating. He spared a pitying glance at those fools scrambling to dispose of or hide their peas and in that instant, he quite clearly foresaw their untimely deaths in his mind. Like so many others before them.

He did not foresee, however, what happened next.

As he lifted his fork up to his face, each of the fork’s prongs adorned with a frigid pea of their own, his arm twitched. Abruptly a brilliant, fluctuating crackle of power shot down his forearm. Lighting surged through his fingers, passed into the fork, ran along the handle and converged into a singular prong that evaporated with a deafening bang. The frozen pea at its end blasted outwards and passed straight into Shale’s left eye, continuing through his frontal lobe before stopping somewhere in the midst of his jellied occipital.

Shale’s head rocked back before arching forward dramatically and smacking down into his leftover food with a splat.

Shale Kadran was very much dead.